REPOSITORY REVIEWS: ALAN MOORE'S AWESOME ADVENTURES

PROLOGUE

I make no secret of my love for the works of Alan Moore. I think he's the greatest comic book writer ever to have walked the Earth, and I'm well on my way to owning everything he's written. Nevertheless, until recently I'd found there to be an odd gap in his bibliography; following From Hell in the early 90s, I didn't know of anything he'd done until the arrival of the ABC line in 1999. But in fact Moore had, during that period, returned to the superhero genre for one of stranger experiments in the recent history of the comics industry.

The results, while rather mixed in comparison to Moore's other work, is certainly less mockable than the other esoteric comics I've written about in Reviews From the Repository…but they're quite interesting nonetheless, so I've decided to do a special 4-part article about this strange little body of work. So come with me now as we recount...

ALAN MOORE'S AWESOME ADVENTURES

PART ONE: 1963

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

It's a source of eternal shame to me that my induction into the world of comics-the hardcore "geek" comics, that is, as opposed to Archie or Uncle Scrooge-came at the hands of early Image. I had a friend in high school who let me read his comics, and ranked high on the pull list was…Spawn. Hey, I was just a kid. And the Marvel and DC comics of the era were incomprehensible jumbles of continuity and ridiculous occurances that were not, to say the least, welcoming to the newcomer. (It's only through sheer luck and patience that I became a comics geek at all, really; I'm not surprised that the industry is in so much trouble.) Spawn was brand-new, I could read it from more-or-less the beginning, and hey, the art was pretty. Of course, in retrospect this is downright embarrassing. Todd MacFarlane knew little or nothing about storytelling, and most of the "ideas" that went into his comic were stolen from Spider-man and other then-popular Marvel tropes. Like much of what Image produced at the time, it was shiny, flashy, superficially "KEWL" in the kind of way that appeals to disaffected 13-year-olds, and was totally cut off from the vast, proud history of comics.

I can say this much for the teenaged me: Jeff Smith's Bone and Neil Gaiman's Sandman came along pretty quickly to refine my tastes. And at least I never touched a Rob Liefeld comic. Rob Liefeld was in some ways the major architect of Image comics. A 19-year-old wunderkind who'd been drawing several of Marvel's X-books and had achieved a fan following, Liefeld didn't like the traditionally disdainful treatment Marvel applied to its artists. Correctly believing they could do better for themselves, Liefeld, MacFarlane and several others split to set up Image comics, where their name recognition instantly gave them the clout and sales figures to be the first serious challengers to Marvel and DC in decades.

The problem was that aforementioned "KEWL" thing. And in Liefeld's case, he didn't even have the superficial flashiness of MacFarlane and his contemporaries. Essentially, he drew (and, apparently, acted) like a teenager who'd been given the keys to the kingdom without having to work for them…which was precisely what he was. Others have written more eloquently about Liefeld's many failings, but suffice it to say the guy had a big ego and a distinct lack of talent. He also had a tendency to snickeringly parodize (and/or outright steal) other, more famous superhero characters from the big two to fuel his own books. Pay attention to this-it gets important later. For now, though, Liefeld and co.'s triumph was met with profoundly mixed feelings throughout the comics industry. Many were happy to see a company finally emerge which granted full rights to the creators, but the actual content Image was putting out was terrible-juvenile, amoral dreck that exploited and revelled in all the worst parts of human nature. And no one watched with more horror than Alan Moore.

You see, back in 1986, Moore wrote a graphic novel called "Watchmen". Widely considered the best superhero story ever written, and maybe the best comic period, Watchmen explodes and dissects the superhero mythos in fascinating ways. Questioning and criticizing the idea of the superhero, and often holding it up in a negative light, the story is frequently dark, violent, and cynical-it even flirts with outright nihilism (though more in some of the characters' viewpoints than in the story itself). Moore had intended the work to shake up the superhero genre. What he hadn't counted on was that every two-bit comics hack would swipe the superficial angst and darkness for their own work, while leaving out the more interesting core concepts, to transform the formerly fun genre of superheroes into a relentless onslaught of "grim 'n' gritty" poseurism. So not only was Moore forced to watch comics trap themselves in a deteriorating spiral of unhealthiness (one that ultimately drove away readers and delivered a huge blow to the industry, both artistically and financially), he was plagued by the knowledge that it was, in a way, his own fault.

Moore had also quarreled with DC for various reasons, and since Marvel was similarly on his enemies list, it's not surprising that Moore had little to do with the superhero genre for a while afterwards. But the guy clearly retained a love for the genre, one that was about to bear strange fruit. If a superhero comic he'd written had gotten superheroes into such a mess, maybe he could write another superhero comic to get them out of it. Despite the conflicting ideals of Moore and the Image crew, Moore had contributed to the company in the past (he wrote at least one issue of Spawn, for example) and it was through Image that 1963 was born. 1963 was meant to be a wakeup call to the medium, a friendly reminder that comics had once been fun, kid-friendly, and entertaining. The inherent dopiness of classic Marvel wasn't anything to be ashamed of-after all, it was still miles better than the inherent dopiness of the current breed of comics. 1963 would represent a return to the glory days of Stan and Jack: a six-issue series capped by an old-fashioned 80-page giant, done entirely in the style of classic Marvel. That is, not only would the characters be thinly-veiled riffs on the Silver Age heroes we all know and love, and not only would they be lovingly rendered in a rough approximation of Marvel's house style, but Moore and his artist collaborators would use the "Marvel method" to create them. That is to say, Moore would lay out the idea for the story, the artist would contribute suggestions, they'd create a rough outline, the artist would draw the story, and then Moore would fill in the dialogue balloons. Even the paper and printing process would replicate comics of the era.

The six issues of 1963 thus created were as follows. First came Mystery Incorporated, featuring a riff on the Fantastic Four ("Crystal Man", "The Neon Queen", "Kid Dynamo" and "The Planet") drawn by Rick Veitch and Dave Gibbons. Next was No One Escapes the Fury, starring a distinctly Spider-man like teen superhero battling a sentient dinosaur (and with a cameo from a female version of Nick Fury), drawn by Veitch and Stephen Bissette. Issue 3, Tales of the Uncanny, was a twofer: the Patriotic U. S. Agent foils the Kennedy assassination (by Veitch and Simpson) and the bizarre super-scientific Hypernaut battles an invader from the 4th dimension (by Bissette and Chester Brown). Issue 4, Tales From Beyond was also split in two, with the Hulk-like N-Man drawn by Bissette and John Totleben and the faux-hip Johnny Beyond drawn by Jim Valentino and Bissette. Horus, Lord of Light gave us the Egyptian deity as a superhero defending the Sun's Barge as it made its way across the night sky to morning (Veitch and Totleben). And finally, The Tomorrow Syndicate brought together most of the above-mentioned heroes as a crimefighting group a la The Avengers. (For the purposes of full disclosure, I should note that I haven't been able to find a copy of the original first issue, and am writing this based on notes and annotations throughout the web.)

Of course, it's not simply a love letter to classic Marvel. Moore-who takes on the persona of "Affable Al" in his role as writer and editor-does a bang-on parody as well, singling out Stan Lee in particular for some pretty stinging barbs. ("Affable Al" is an egomaniac blowhard who regularly steals the credit from his hard-working, impoverished artists…sound familiar?) In fact, as an amusing footnote, Moore produced a series of gag interviews in the persona of the various creators of 1963, which you can read HERE. And of course the works themselves also lovingly lay most of Stan's work in its grave-awkward panel transitions, ridiculously overwrought and wordy dialogue, and ridiculous plot contrivances abound. Woven throughout the six issues is a background mystery that starts to come together in the final issue, as the Syndicate investigates some mysterious weapons that were confiscated earlier in the series and appear to have come from an alternate reality. As they zap through the dimensions, they slowly start to come across things that simply don't belong in their world, and evidence that someone's been tampering with the nature of reality. By the end they find themselves in what is clearly an offshoot of our own world, the art has become far more modern in style, and suddenly the heroes of the past find themselves headed towards a confrontation with those very same gritty, violent Image characters I was mentioning earlier- --A confrontation that never actually happened.

The story of what exactly happened to the climactic 1963 annual (which went by the name "1963 and a half") is somewhat confused and vague. It seems as though Jim Lee, who'd been on tap to draw it, decided to take a year off, and by the time he'd returned…well, Image was no longer the company it had been. In particular, Rob Liefeld-whose characters had apparently been planned as an integral part of the annual-split off to form his own comics company, which meant that it would be hard to publish it under the Image banner. However, I have read that Liefeld OK'd the use of his characters, and besides-why not just get someone else to draw it? That question remains unanswered to this day, as 1963 ½ has yet to be published. Most of the parties involved seem willing to do it, but of course there's the interesting hurdle that the commentary on the comics world that Moore had been making is no longer as relevant; superheroes of the "grim n' gritty" school have mostly vanished, and (artistically at least) the comics medium is recovering its health. Rick Veitch has said that Moore has actually rewritten the 1963 ½ script to make a more up-to-date statement on the comics industry, so it may still happen someday, but until then, 1963 remains an unfinished story.

That question remains unanswered to this day, as 1963 ½ has yet to be published. Most of the parties involved seem willing to do it, but of course there's the interesting hurdle that the commentary on the comics world that Moore had been making is no longer as relevant; superheroes of the "grim n' gritty" school have mostly vanished, and (artistically at least) the comics medium is recovering its health. Rick Veitch has said that Moore has actually rewritten the 1963 ½ script to make a more up-to-date statement on the comics industry, so it may still happen someday, but until then, 1963 remains an unfinished story. Surprisingly, however, this is not the last time that Rob Liefeld's name intersects with Moore's-quite the contrary. In fact, for the next five years, the two names would be increasingly intertwined, a fact that still causes astonishment among comics literati. For more on their bizarre collaborations, tune in to the next installment of this article, and see why Alan Moore really does reign Supreme among comics writers… On to Part 2!

REPOSITORY REVIEWS:

ALAN MOORE'S AWESOME ADVENTURES

PART TWO: SUPREME

So. In the last installment of this piece we established how Alan Moore tweaked the conventions of the superhero genre, how Rob Liefeld (among others) rode the tail end of the trend to create a series of obnoxiously "grim n' gritty" (hereinafter GnG) pseudo-superhero comics, and how Moore became committed to reversing the damage by writing superhero comics that were fun and evocative of the classics. In light of this, it therefore seems just a tad incongruous that the first monthly superhero title Moore wrote after 1963 starred a character created by Rob Liefeld. You may recall that in the last installment I mentioned Liefeld's penchant for creating characters that were suspiciously similar to other well-known superheroes from the Big Two companies. This is actually one of the few things he has in common with Moore, and they even do it for the same reasons…in the same sense that a beaver shares a common purpose with Frank Lloyd Wright. Certain comics characters are so iconic that it becomes de rigeur to create "alternate" versions of them for the purposes of analysis or parody. And the most common of these archetypes is, of course, the character who started it all-Superman.

Liefeld's characters, though, featured several levels of vileness. He created them for the purpose of "parody", but not in the sense that he made them funny or had anything interesting to say; it was more just a layer of ironic detachment that made it supposedly OK to create GnG versions of traditionally more-well behaved characters. What was really annoying about this, though, was that Liefeld clearly revelled in the violence and amorality he brought to the characters; but like a 6th grade bully who has snapped a girl's bra strap once too often, he wanted to be able to claim that it was just a joke, and can't you people relax? Geez! Hence we got Youngblood, Rob's primary creation, who as far as anyone can tell is just an amalgamation of the various popular Marvel characters, particularly the Avengers; Shaft is Hawkeye, Vogue is the Black Widow, Badrock is the Thing, and so on. Ditto the "New Men" (The X-Men, obviously), "Glory" (Wonder Woman) and…Supreme. Supreme was, if I've got this correctly, a super-soldier from the WWII era who had contracted amnesia during a sojourn in outer space; upon his return, Youngblood had to deal with this out-of-control metahuman. Besides being able to survive in a vacuum unaided and not aging since the 1940s, he could (obviously) fly at incredible speeds, was immensely strong, and has a kind of strange laser-beam vision. Oh, and he wore a cape. And he was an out-of-control killing machine, though of course that was slightly mollified when he became the hero of his own book. Slightly.

Whatever Liefeld was trying to say about Superman-and it's fairly doubtful Liefeld has ever had anything to say through his work, but let's grant him the benefit of the doubt-it didn't seem particularly compelling. Nevertheless, since Liefeld was one of the bigwigs at Image, had an immense cult following, and was pretty much committed to producing material, Supreme's comic ran for 40 uninspired issues throughout the mid-90s. With Liefeld himself only occasionally contributing, however, and with his departure from Image to form his own banner, the readership went into a slow decline. It's at this point that the good folks at Maximum publishing (for such was Liefeld's imprint called at the time-it's also gone by the names of Extreme and Awesome, which reveals just about all there is to reveal about the creative workings of Liefeld's mind) had the brainwave of calling in Moore. Moore wanted to work on superhero comics but was at odds with Marvel and DC; Moore had just worked with Liefeld, sorta; and most importantly, Moore had turned around a low-selling comic in the past, with his renovation of Swamp Thing.

Moore agreed to write the series for a 12-issue run starting on #41, with the condition that he could rework the character (for whom he had, understandably, little affection) in any way he saw fit. The Maximum folks agreed, and Moore took to writing the series with a deal of gusto that seems to have surprised even himself. Issue 41 features Supreme coming back from space for some damn reason or another, only to find the entire Earth undergoing a bizarre process called "The Revision", in which history seems to be doubling back on itself. He's quickly confronted by multiple characters in Supreme costumes, who seem to be alternate versions of himself (this was actually a conceit of the series before Moore came on board, but Moore did much more interesting things with it-one of the alternate versions, for instance, is a cartoon mouse in a Supreme suit). They whisk him away to a place called the Supremacy, a world populated entirely by Supremes of various shapes, powers, and genders, as well as equally redundant versions of his supporting casts-people named Judy Jordan, Billy Friday, and others. In short, it's the place where all the revised versions of a comic superhero end up when they are dropped from continuity-and they're there to salute him as he begins his life as the latest incarnation of Supreme.

Upon his return to Earth, he finds himself in a new life as mild-mannered Ethan Crane, comic book artist, with with a cigar-chomping editor, a very young and slightly demented partner named Billy Friday, and a new colleague, the lovely Diana Dane. The Supreme costume hangs in his closet for when Omegapolis is threatened by evil. In the second issue, Supreme (as Ethan) visits his old hometown of Littlehaven, and finds his memories beginning to re-emerge. It seems that he was gifted with superpowers (sorry, Supremepowers) as a small child, when he got too close to a mysterious substance called Supremium that fell from the sky. Here, Moore introduces an inspired concept: the comic book flashback sequence. The middle third of this book is drawn by Rick Veitch in an absolutely bang-on pastiche of Golden Age superman, right down to the lettering and the yellowed pages; Veitch easily trumps his 1963 work here. From here on out, every issue of the comic features a short story that recounts an episode from Supreme's history, lovingly recreated by Moore, Veitch, letterer Todd Klein and others, that weaves itself expertly into the main ongoing story of Supreme slowly rediscovering his past.

What's fascinating about this is that Moore has made the character interesting by making him MORE of a Superman ripoff, not less. Actually, the term "homage" applies here, as you'd have to be developmentally disabled to overlook the correlation; Supreme has everything Superman had during the Golden and Silver Age, point for point. What's really impressive is Moore's detailed knowledge of Superman lore-not only does he nail the tone, he fills the stories with all kinds of cool (if frequently goofy) stuff that has since been dropped from even the real Superman. Supreme has an orbital fortress, the Citadel Supreme, manned by robotic decoy versions of himself; a kid sister with the same powers, Suprema, and even Radar, the Hound Supreme; an aversion to Supremium; membership in the Justice League-like Allies and the time-travelling League of Infinity; and of course, an archnemesis, Darius Dax…though we learn he's actually been dead since the 60s. Not that that will necessarily stop him from taking his revenge. Moore also manages to incorporate all these in-jokes while still putting frequently interesting new spins on them; my favourite was Billy Friday, fired comics writer, who is both the Jimmy Olsen analogue and a composite parody of a lot of comics writers (including Grant Morrison and Liefeld himself) who embrace shock over substance. The comic is filled with this kind of meta-commentary on the state of comics past and present, and in the course of it all Moore manages to create something coherent and tremendously entertaining. The rich history Moore dreams up for Supreme grows ever more expansive, to the point where you can't help regretting that DC itself hasn't done this stuff in so long. Which is, of course, Moore's whole point.

The 12 issues (collected in the Trade Paperback "Supreme: The Story of the Year") form a wonderful self-contained storyline, but somewhere along the line Moore got so caught up in the fun of working with the character that he committed to a second 12-issue series. This next batch of issues continues to develop the series and tie up loose ends; it also sometimes goes in very goofy directions, such as the storyline in which Radar's philandering spawns a new race of super-puppies, or the occasion in which Supreme battles the comic book hero he's been drawing all this time at the behest of Szazs, the mischief-making sprite (and no, you can't get rid of him by saying his name backwards). We also follow the burgeoning romance between himself and Diana, which provides the emotional touchstone for the series, as well the return of Dax (who's discovered that he, too, has a dimension full of alternate versions of himself, and they're spoiling for a fight…) There's also what is probably the artistic highlight of the book, Veitch's bang-on homage to Jack Kirby, who Supreme ends up meeting in a lost civilization in Tibet, surrounded by his own creations. In a way, it's not a bad send-off for a series that had done so much to restore the style and fun of classic superheroes. But it is a send-off that shouldn't have happened. Unfortunately-and this becomes a sad refrain all through this article-Liefeld's flakiness put a halt to the fun before the second series could be properly finished. A major financier pulled out of Liefeld's publishing mini-empire, and despite the fact that the sales were good, Liefeld pulled the plug on Supreme just as the series was approaching its conclusion. The two final issues, which would have detailed the war between the Supremacy and Daxia, never saw print and were in fact not even finished. This lends the second collection an unsatisfying feel; without the final issues to put a capper on the series, the collection feels basically like a series of unconnected stories instead of a coherent story. Still, the retro fun and imagination of the first volume are present and accounted for. Completed or not, Moore was hardly finished with his retro rampage; in fact, he was just warming up. Next time, we pass "Judgement" on one of the strangest collaborations, and most ambitious could-have-beens, in recent comic history...

Continue to Part 3!

ALAN MOORE'S AWESOME ADVENTURES PART THREE: JUDGMENT DAY

As I pulled the lone copy of the Judgment Day trade paperback compilation of the shelf, the comic shop clerk who had guided me towards this shadowy corner of the store adopted a pained expression. "I've got to warn you," he winced, "that was drawn by Rob Liefeld." Indeed. But these are the risks you take when you become an Alan Moore completist, and besides, how could I disappoint you, the readers, by ignoring this crucial component of the saga of Alan Moore's Awesome Adventures? To do so would be to shirk my duty. So, with baited breath and gritted teeth, I delved into the world of Judgment Day…a crummy world of missing backgrounds, horrendous anatomy, hilarious facial expressions, and mysteriously absent feet. In the previous two installments of this article, Rob Liefeld, once the Most Hated Man in Comics (and with some justification, too) has loomed larger and larger as his path intersects with Alan Moore, but now we come to the crux of it: a "special comics event" scripted by Moore and drawn by Liefeld. Starring, in fact, the characters from Youngblood, considered by many to be one of the great black marks on comics history--not just because it was bad, but because it was so popular, and had such a deleterious effect on the industry. Youngblood, as mentioned in the previous chapter, was Liefeld's answer to The Avengers, a government-sponsored team of superheroes used on covert (cough) military missions, and licensed to use extreme force. And use it they did. If I'm not mistaken, the first issue featured a serial killer-turned-superhero (such is not a contradiction in Liefeld's world) messily dispatching a Saddam Hussein-analogue; another team member, "Chapel", represented possibly the nadir of juvenile shock tactics, being a philandering gunman who'd been deliberately infected with HIV for the purposes of population control. I need a shower. As mentioned, in the mid-to-late-90s Liefeld's star was beginning to lose its luster. At the same time, the Moore-scripted Supreme was increasing its readership every month, and gaining critical accolades into the bargain, based solely on Moore's storytelling and imagination. It may just as easily have been Liefeld's idea as Moore's, but a deal was struck to cut Moore loose on Liefeld's nascent "Awesome Universe" writ large (Awesome was, at the time, the name of Liefeld's publishing banner). This ambitious revamp would begin with a three-issue miniseries called "Judgment Day" (Liefeld's title). Liefeld presumably imagined an apocalyptic event that would "hit the reset button", so to speak, but what Moore ended up doing was both more subtle and, in a way, more ambitious. The "Judgment" in question ended up referring to a legal trial-but in the broader sense, Moore is also passing judgment on the state of modern superheroes. (WARNING: I'm going to spoil some of the story of Judgment Day in the following paragraphs, though I'm not going to reveal "whodunit". The way the trial unfolds, however, is hardly the point of the exercise.) I should begin by mentioning, for those of you who know nothing about Youngblood, that it consists of two teams, the domestic and international operatives. The domestic team is headed by-don't laugh, now-a very white guy named "Shaft", one of the few members of Youngblood who might be considered a recognizable human being, and a fairly blatant ripoff of Marvel's Hawkeye. The name "Shaft" refers to the shaft of his arrows, get it? NOT to the fact that he's a sex machine with all the chicks, or a bad-mother-shut-your-mouth. Ahem. Anyway, the leader of the international team is known as Sentinel, and as it happens he is black, and from the streets, BOY-EEEE! He's also an engineer who built himself a flying, strength-enhancing supersuit-so he's the Iron Man rip. Other team members include the Captain America-like Diehard, a patriotic cyborg whose career dates back to WWII but has sacrificed his humanity for the near-immortality offered by cybernetic enhancement; Moore had already made use of Diehard as a member of the Allies in the pages of Supreme, and he seems to be one of the few Youngblood characters Moore actually finds interesting. Then there's Youngblood's own Fonzie, Badrock, a teenager in the body of a gigantic rock monster (I'll leave you to guess which Marvel character he's a ripoff of); Riptide, a typically pneumatic and scantily-clad chick who can control moisture; Vogue, an expat Russian who dresses like a mid-80s glam rocker; and Knightsabre, an Australian drongo whose powers have something to do with making people around him angry. This understandably makes him unpopular with his teammates, and in fact kicks off the plot of Judgment Day. When Knightsabre stumbles back to Youngblood HQ on the night of his 30th birthday, drunk and horny, he makes the mistake of crashing in Riptide's room, apparently with less than honourable intentions. Unfortunately, on waking, he discovers the bed covered in blood and Riptide lying murdered in the next room. Faced with the delicate situation of a murder where both victim and suspect are superheroes, Youngblood is forced to call together the entire superhuman community to participate in a precedent-setting trial. At this point, Youngblood themselves begin to take a backseat to the array of characters Moore created in Supreme and a whole array of new characters he introduces for this storyline, and to lay the groundwork for his revamped Awesome Universe. Most of the above-mentioned Youngblood characters get only a handful of lines and face-time, with the exceptions of Shaft, Sentinel and Diehard; even Knightsabre doesn't contribute much to the story, besides being the accused whose innocence must be proven. Acknowledged by all to be a unique situation, the superheroes close ranks and make special arrangements for the trial. Supreme converts the stadium area of his Citadel Supreme into a huge courtroom, to hold pretty much the entire superhero population and a superhero-friendly judge is appointed. Handling the prosecution is a former partner of Professor Night's named Shona Shane, aka Lady Day (presumably meant to be in her 50s, but drawn by Liefeld as a 20-year-old hottie with grey hair); the defense is a very young kid named Toby Tyler (although he's later called "Mr. King" for some reason) who is better known as "Skippy", sidekick to The Fisherman (the Moore-created analogue to the Green Arrow). This takes us to the end of the first issue. As rendered by Liefeld, this story is, as you might expect, not as impressive as the subject deserves. In particular, Liefeld's aversion to drawing backgrounds can practically cause eyestrain as you try and get a sense of where the characters are. Moore has mentioned in interviews that Liefeld ignored most of his suggestions in regards to what to draw, and it's particularly noticeable in the scenes featuring the courtroom/stadium: instead of an awe-inspiring structure seating hundreds of bizarre and unique costumed figures, we get a simply-sketched row of lines with some silhouettes in the background. Occasionally Liefeld throws in an array of close-up panels to compensate for the fact that we can't see the faces of the audience members. Yet Kirby never made a quarter of the money this guy made. But wait! It's not all bad! Perhaps anticipating that we'd need respite from the assault on the eyeballs that is Liefeld's art, the first issue is interposed with a series of short (4- or 5-page) stories of seemingly unrelated stories done in an old-fashioned comic style, just like the interstitial segments of Supreme. These ones feature a variety of classic-style comic characters: a Tarzan analogue, a Conan analogue, a Prince Valiant, a war story, a bunch of western heroes, and so forth. These are drawn by an array of far superior artists including Chris Sprouse, Rick Veitch, and Steve Skroce (who will be becoming more important shortly) as well as no less a figure than Gil Kane. The reason for these asides becomes clear in the second issue. When the time comes to begin the defense, Toby (who sort of takes over as the series' central character at this point) starts to unexpectedly weave a complex tale that goes back to the birth of humanity and incorporates the various stories we've heard so far. It seems that, way back at the dawn of time, the goddess Demeter (Glory's mother) was given a book by the god Hermes-a book that was the embodiment of language, story, and history itself. In essence, it was the story of the world, already written and waiting to be played out. Demeter ended up hiding the book in a cave on the newly-formed Earth, where it was eventually found by Giganthro of the League of Infinity, who hurled it down a chasm. Eventually, it was dug up by a troll named…Troll, who was enslaved to a powerful sorceror named Magnar Teufelson before he was killed by "Bram the Berzerk" (the Conan analogue); the book eventually passed through the hands of Merlin, the Knights Templar, and many many others. What eventually became clear was that the book had immense power; not only did it have the power to increase intelligence and promote unnaturally long life to its owner, but one could play a part in actively altering history, including one's own past and future, simply by rewriting the book. A puritan adventurer named Deliverance Drue first put this aspect to use to fight evil, but later it was employed by the Allies member Storybook Smith, who used the book to summon literary characters to fight crime. But it was the books' next owner who caused the most damage with it… Without revealing too much, it turns out that someone's been using the book to create a new era of dark, violent superheroes. Things started to change, however, when Riptide stole the book; unfortunately, its former owner came looking for it, and was prepared to kill to get it back. All this is almost a sidenote, however, to Moore's reinvention of the characters. By the end of the trial, Youngblood has been shut down by the government and disbanded, the former members going on to new lives, and the modern heroes have found themselves humbled by a glimpse of the rich history of the universe they live in-a history that is now preparing to be born anew now that the book is in better hands. The last part of the book, "Aftermath", is drawn not by Liefeld but by Gil Kane (with a short contribution by Steve Skroce). Here Moore lays the groundwork for six, count 'em, SIX new comic titles, including a revamped Youngblood. Waxey Doyle, the former Waxman of the Allies and now a furniture polish magnate, offers to put up the seed money to support a new Youngblood with Shaft as team leader; the new team is younger and generally more well-behaved, if still dogged by angst and bickering (as you'd expect from a bunch of teenagers). The other shorts include a new, more mythologically-inspired Glory, who petitions the moon goddess Selene for a new identity as a mortal; the revamped New Men, now under the aegis of the Conquerors of the Uncanny, forming a team of scientist/explorer/adventurers; "Maximage" (also, I believe, a revamped Liefeld character), a sorceress who learns she's only the latest in a long line of magic-wielders; the reformed Allies, who as mentioned are basically the equivalent of the Justice League; and Spacehunter (another member of the Allies), a very weird little short featuring a character who speaks entirely in alien glyphs. Add to that the dozens of new characters that Moore fleshed out in the history of the book, and you've got a foundation for an incredibly ambitious new line of comics. But, as ever, Liefeld dropped the ball, and almost none of this ever came to pass. In the next chapter we'll look at the aftermath of Judgment Day and beginning of the new Awesome universe…which also turned out to be the end of the Awesome Universe.

Continue to Part 4!

REPOSITORY REVIEWS:

ALAN MOORE'S AWESOME ADVENTURES

PART FOUR: AFTERMATH & ABC

Exactly what led to the downfall of Awesome Entertainment, and Alan Moore's revamp of same, is somewhat subjective. The literal cause was the pulling-out of a major investor, necessitating the cancellation of many titles. However, this probably wouldn't have put an end to Moore's work at Awesome had the publishers really been committed to the work he was doing. In "The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore" (a book of interviews), Moore complains that Liefeld and the others don't seem to have bothered to read his proposals and synopses until it was too late, and Moore had gone on to better things. Fortunately these proposals were eventually published in "Alan Moore's Awesome Universe Sourcebook", thus providing further insight into his plans for the line. Those better things would include his own line of comics published by Wildstorm, known collectively by the modest title of "America's Best Comics". ABC itself almost fell apart when Wildstorm was bought up by DC, an organization which Moore had sworn not to work for again, but the ABC publishers (unlike those at Awesome) cared about the stories Moore had pitched, and convinced him to go through with it. In some ways this is almost a shame. The ABC line is, in many ways, a continuation of the ideas he was fostering at Awesome, to the point where a perusal of Tom Strong, Promethea, and Tomorrow Stories will seem extremely familiar to those who have read his Awesome work-for example, Tom Strong has a lot in common with Supreme in terms of creating an imaginary backstory, and also features some of the "scientific exploration" aspects that he'd introduced into "New Men". But the ABC titles lack the same sense of "co-existence" which Moore had done such a great job setting up with the Awesome books-almost better than any other "shared universe" I've yet read, actually. Yes, Marvel included. Little details in one comic grow into major premises in another, and with mere hints Moore sets up a complex world that hangs together in the reader's imagination as much for what isn't shown as for what is. Furthermore, the whole Awesome Universe grew up very organically as Moore began to take over, creating an elaborate backdrop in Supreme which became the source for ideas in Judgment Day, which in turn spawned a host of ideas and characters for the other titles. ABC takes place in a "shared universe" as well, but that aspect is somewhat downplayed, and you don't quite believe it when the characters cross over. The Awesome universe could have been a great deal more satisfying in that regard, and furthermore there were some great setups in the Awesome titles that were never carried over into ABC. That's not to badmouth ABC, which is still excellent, but it isn't all of a piece the way Awesome is.

As stated in the last chapter, Moore had, with "Judgment Day", laid out an ambitious roadmap for a rich, detailed comic book universe with an elaborate history, much of it a deliberate riff on existing comic characters (particularly those of the DC Universe). Some of it seemed to have been created more as texture or to fill a gap (he'd had to populate the world with superheroes to create analogues for the Justice League, for instance) but then later became the source of further stories. Thus, with a mere 12 issues of Supreme (the remaining issues were still in development at the time) and 4 of Judgment Day, he had created almost as large a backdrop for Awesome as Liefeld had cranking out title after title, which he could draw on to reshape the various comics he'd been handed. The first such was Youngblood, which as I mentioned in the prior article was a much-hated title within the industry. Perhaps predictably, within the course of an issue, Moore had won the critics over to the title. Of course, there wasn't much that remained the same from the old Youngblood. With one member dead, another incarcerated for the murder, and the government withdrawing funding for the team, only the young leader, Shaft, remains, to found a privately-funded new team of teenagers (Hence the name "Youngblood" actually meaning something this time out). The new members include two from the pages of Supreme: the Ivory Icon's own sister Suprema, who's basically a semi-omnipotent Nancy Drew, and Twilight, Professor Night's teen sidekick (initially a female version of Robin), now reconstituted as a mysterious leather-wearing goth.

Joining the roster is Leonard "Big Brother" Doyle, wheelchair-bound (and extremely ascerbic) adopted son of their employer, who operates a series of gigantic robot bodies; Doc Rocket, granddaughter of the former Allies member of the same name, a chipper girl with superspeed abilities; and the hilarious Johnny Panic, described by Moore in the Sourcebook as "The first postmodern superhero". Johnny has an illusion suit that can replicate any image he can program into it, and a gun that fires designer drug pellets. He's also a wiseass slacker, sort of the Maynard G. Krebs of superheroes. As with Supreme, Moore attempted with Youngblood to create a comic that replicated the fun and imagination of yesteryear, while still updating it into something slick and modern. In fact, Youngblood is rather more slick and modern than Supreme, maintaining a less self-aware and campy tone while still having fun with the premise of a group of teenaged superheroes and weaving it into the tapestry of the Awesome Universe. Moore seemed to be attempting to make a team book that would honestly appeal to kids, but in a different way than the flashy crap that was clogging the shelves at the time. It's also quite dazzlingly drawn by Steve Skroce, who I knew mostly as a production designer on The Matrix, but whose bold, colourful and detailed artwork creates the perfect mood for these stories. Of all the art I've seen while researching this article, Skroce's is the most delightful discovery.

In the first 3 issues, Youngblood clashes with the government that formerly employed them while battling a body-jumping entity called The Occupant; does battle with "Badblood", an evil superteam formed by a former Youngblood member out for revenge; and falls into the snare of the imprisoned supervillainous fop Jack-a-Dandy (the Awesome equivalent of The Joker) who sends them hurtling back in time. The next issue would have had them teaming up with some of the "old west" heroes introduced in Judgment Day; future installments would have featured a trip to outer space to tackle a cosmic threat called The Goat, a pair of issues focusing on a "day in the life" of each of the male and female members of the team respectively, further skirmishes with Badblood, a time-travelling issue structured like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story, and various romantic entanglements and friction between the members. I've derived my information on Moore's Youngblood plans from a variety of sources. What's interesting about what he wrote in the Sourcebook is that it's sort of sketchy and shows little of Moore's usual writing talent; the ideas have been much refined since they made it onto the comics page. For instance, his notes indicate that the first supervillain Youngblood tangles with, a rather limp menace called Stormhead whose moods affect the weather, should be their major archnemesis, being the progenitor of Badblood and a recurring villain throughout the series. The character who became their major villain instead is the same former Youngblood member who was found guilty of murder at the end of Judgment Day and who has turned to revenge, claiming that he owns the name Youngblood…which is far more interesting. Likewise, the storytelling concepts Moore scripted for future issues (which were never published) are much more interesting than some of the half-assed ideas recorded in the Sourcebook (but then, he was only spitballing).

Unfortunately, we never got to see these issues, due to the collapse of Awesome, which occurred after the second issue. The third issue was eventually published as "Alan Moore's Awesome Adventures #1", and was never followed up, though presumably Awesome had been planning to continue drawing the scripts he had completed. It's sadly true, however, that to a fly-by-night operation such as Awesome had become, there was little incentive to continue publishing a title once issue #1 had come out; I'll explain this in a moment.

First, though, let's look at Awesome's other 2-issue wonder, Glory. Here, again, we see the retroactive echoes of ABC. Moore had envisioned Glory as a retro Wonder Woman pastiche in the same way that he'd tied Supreme to Superman, but there was more to it in this case. In the Judgment Day short, Glory (an immortal demigod) became curious of how mortals lived and took on the form of waitress Gloria West. In the series proper, we learn that Gloria is a real person whose body Glory has been "borrowing"; she's a rather tragic figure, a schizophrenic whose been suffering since her mother passed on. Much of the story is told through the POV of Granger Troy, a poet who's a regular at Gloria's diner and considers her to be his muse. When he gets a chance to go out with her, however, he's racked with guilt over whether he's taking advantage of the mentally ill-which leads to a decision that will have tragic consequences for Glory. Meanwhile, we get a glimpse of Glory's domain, which is a realm of gods and myths based heavily on the lore of Qabbalah; her mother Demeter rules the Earthly, or lowest, sphere, and there are a series of domains that go up the great "world tree" and are linked thematically with various deities from all different cosmologies. There's also the underworld, or Qlippoth, the reverse image of the world tree, whose earthly sphere is ruled by Lilith, a demon-goddess. Her husband had an affair with Demeter which produced Glory, and as such Lilith is devoted to our heroine's destruction.

The Qabbalah stuff will, of course, seem familiar to readers of Promethea, which also featured a mortal becoming the vessel of a goddess, and an exploration of myth and magic (or "magick") as filtered through Carl Jung and Aleister Crowley. Moore also did the "nested flashback" sequences here that he first patented with Supreme, as Gloria and others read old issues of Glory's comic from the 40s and 50s (most of which are very winkingly sexual in much the same way that old Wonder Woman comics are); these sequences are very similar to his "Cobweb" shorts from Tomorrow Stories, the more so since both are drawn by Moore's girlfriend, Melinda Gebbie. I'm a fan of Promethea, but I have to say, the framework Moore created for Glory actually seemed to be even better. Again, there's the organic structure of the stories' background, meshing the superheroic and the mythical quite elegantly, whereas in Promethea the superhero backdrop seems a little haphazard and almost unnecessary. Also, the burgeoning love affair between Granger Troy and Gloria West is downright touching, with Gloria's mental fixations providing a poignant counterpart to Glory's larger-than-life adventures. When Troy, with the best of intentions, tries to medicate her, Gloria's connection with her fantasy life falls away and Glory herself falls into the underworld… Where she had to remain, as that was the last issue that was published. In fact, for reasons I don't understand, it was published not by Awesome but by another company, Avatar, who I guess felt that anything Alan Moore produced ought to see the light of day. It's a real shame that Awesome couldn't have fought harder to get these two titles (and the other revamped comics Moore had had on the boil) produced eventually, but the sad fact is that putting out only a couple of issues served Awesome's purposes. You see, at that point, comics were still seen as something of a collector's market, with the actual stories inside being virtually irrelevant to their "collectability". Liefeld had made extensive use of this fact at Image and throughout his solo career, cranking out comics that never really went anywhere-after all, issue #7 never sells as well as issue #1, so why not just skip it altogether?

Those who actually care about the content of comics instead of how much they'll fetch when polybagged in VF/NM condition were frustrated by this development, to be sure. I still hear people occasionally refer to Moore's Youngblood in wistful tones. In fact, Liefeld is still at it, having recently released yet another relaunch of Youngblood (written by Mark Millar this time) that keeps some of Moore's characters but apparently ditches his continuity. In other words, it sounds like the chances of seeing the rest of Moore's work on the Awesome line are pretty unlikely…more's the pity. Or should I say, MOORE'S the pity? No, I probably shouldn't.